Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz hit Scott Walker’s email list — again and again and again

Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio aggressively solicited the supporters of Scott Walker in the run up to Tuesday's New Hampshire primary, renting his email list more than a dozen times between them in the last 10 days.

Walker, who ended 2015 with more than $1 million in debt, has not yet endorsed in 2016, allowing him to sell access to his 675,000-strong email list to a range of former rivals, including John Kasich, Jeb Bush and Ben Carson in addition to Cruz and Rubio.

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POLITICO reported in December that Walker and his former foes are sometimes striking secret deals to split the proceeds of the email solicitations between them, with donors to 2016 candidates unaware some of their money is being redirected to pay down Walker’s debts.

The emails to Walker’s list have been so frequent — POLITICO found at least 15 since the eve of the Iowa caucuses — that sometimes they land only hours apart, and with parallel messaging.

“You did it tonight!” came the subject line from a Cruz missive near midnight after the Iowa caucuses.

“We did it, [the recipient’s name]!” was the subject line of a Rubio email just after 8 a.m. the next morning.

Rubio sent one with the subject line: “I just got off the phone.” Cruz: “Just got off the phone.”

The glut of email traffic is big business. Beyond those “revenue-sharing” agreements, the firm managing Walker’s list, Granite Lists, also rents out for $10,500 the right to email his “entire file” a single time, and charges $7,000 to email only past Walker donors.

For Cruz and Rubio, payments to digital firms that rent email lists ranked among their biggest expenditures in their first quarters as presidential candidates.

Convoluted federal accounting rules make it impossible to track exactly how much Cruz, Rubio and other campaigns are spending on the Walker list, as payments are often moved through multiple digital firms and intermediaries. Rubio’s campaign did report paying Granite Lists $38,500 in the final quarter of 2015.

Rubio has been the most aggressive in renting Walker’s list of late, sending missives not only under his name but his wife’s, Jeannette. “I didn't tell Marco that I was going to send you this email, but I felt it was so important to reach out to you today,” she wrote on the day of the Iowa caucuses.

Walker’s committee has given Granite Lists authority to rent out his list at its discretion as it seeks to raise money to pay off its debts. Rubio’s campaign declined to comment and Cruz’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment. Larry Ross, a Carson spokesman, said their campaign “has made use of every available fundraising resource” but declined to talk about the specifics of their arrangement with Walker.

Carson rented the list last Friday, using the subject line: “We must demand accountability.”